The Awake and Sleeping Heroes
by golfer
Summary: Mario is asleep, attempting to sleep away an illness, when suddenly, the town erupts into flames as toads are thrust into the air in one of Bowser's newest and most horrible schemes.  However, with Mario gone, an unlikely hero steps up to the plate...


**Forgive my inactivity. I'm on deviantART all the time, but I'm here rarely. Anyways, hope this suffices for my inactivity. It's just a quick little short story which I conjured up in my spare time, just so nobody gets the idea that I abandoned the site. Anyways, enjoy.**

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><p>The sounds of shrieking filled the often-peaceful streets of the city as hundreds of toads rushed about, desperate to avoid the metal behemoth which pursued them. Ashes lined the streets, the victims of the monster's fiery attacks on innocent toads. Some toads, eager to escape the chaos, resorted to hiding in the goomba-infested sewers. Others rushed into houses, mere straw before the monster on their tails. Some dove into ditches, and some just kept running. The monster, the forty foot monster wearing steel armor with wooden frames surrounding it, marched along the streets, paying no attention to the screams of the denizens of the destroyed town.<p>

"Mario! Help!" The toads' screams were for naught, for the hero was bed-ridden, extremely ill.

"Luigi...bro..." Mario muttered, weakly. "Do you hear some yelling outside? Can you tell them to be quiet so I can sleep?" Luigi smiled kindly and nodded, before getting out of his chair and stepping out of the small, bright room.

Cracking open the door, eager to see what the commotion was about, Luigi gasped with terror as the large, metal creature, resembling an old foe, bore down upon the town. Buildings were on fire, smoke filled the sky, and toads trudged through the ashes of the burnt, running for their lives.

Luigi shut the door in panic.

"What was that about?" Mario asked, his best effort to yell merely a fragile whisper which barely made its way to Luigi's ears. Images of the metal terror ran through his mind.

"Uh...nothing! Just...the toads messing around and cheering!" Luigi responded, covering up the ensuing trouble. He noticed that his breathing was extremely heavy. Worse off, without Mario, if that thing continued to wreak havoc, the town was doomed.

Without warning, Luigi heard a terrible crash; just the terrible sound of it sent the plumber to the ground. Standing up anxiously once more, he peeked out of the peep hole, and watched in utter helplessness and horror as the Italian restaurant was burnt to ashes, the monster standing above the once large building in triumph.

Luigi's gloved hand balled into a fist. Mario's snores could be heard, and Luigi knew that nobody but him would save the town. Luigi slowly opened the door, already contemplating turning back, but forced himself out the door before the change of mind could occur. The toads were still rushing about, and the monster was still trudging through the town, indiscriminately walking through whatever got in his way. Luigi observed the monster's eyes, easily as big as Luigi was, and noticed that they twitched around, as if he were looking for something.

Luigi thought for a moment, puzzled as to what the beast could be looking for, when he saw the back of the beast, covered in spikes resembling perfectly that foe of old that he and Mario put an end to those years back.

Bowser.

But that's impossible, Luigi thought to himself. Luigi watched as Mario and Bowser held a final showdown merely two years prior, as Mario delivered a fatal blow to Bowser, sending him into a fiery pit with a wound through the heart. Luigi watched from the sidelines as Bowser had been burnt into a lifeless skeleton by his own lava, and he watched as that spike was driven into Bowser's heart. There was only one other who would model a beast to look like that.

Bowser Jr.

If indeed that was Bowser Jr., Luigi thought, then that means that the metal monster was after Peach. He had to be. Luigi watched in horror, continued horror, as the monster set fields ablaze, once peaceful, green fields, all on fire, all transformed into ash.

Luigi sat on the steps of his house, staring at the monster. It looked unstoppable. There was no flesh, no weak point, and it appeared stronger than anything before. Luigi searched frantically with his eyes for a weakness on the metallic monster, from the wooden frames to the metal armor...

As if on cue from a star spirit, Luigi had an idea. The fireballs that the monster sent out, terrorizing the denizens, were a weakness, as the beast was practically framed around wood. Luigi's attention turned to the cliffside merely a mile away from the farthest building. A fall off that cliff would crush the monster, Luigi realized. With the utmost haste, Luigi searched for something, anything, that he could use to reflect fire or set fire. Nothing but a paperclip and a button, hardly a suitable weapon for anything greater than the true Bowser.

Luigi rushed inside the house, slamming the door and rushing to the kitchen. Surely there would be something that would reflect a fireball. Luigi's mind thought to Mario's favorite plate, the Silver Platter, that Mario cherished. It was the one thing that Mario never wanted to share with his little brother, nor did he ever even want Luigi to touch it. The only one Mario would let touch it was Princess Peach, and even then, he had tried to avoid that. Most significant, though, was the shine to the plate. Luigi picked up the forbidden plate, it being three feet in diameter, and looked into it, seeing his reflection clearly. Mario polished the thing every week, even when he never ate off it.

It would do.

Luigi rushed out of the house, slamming the door in haste once again, but armed with the plate, he charged towards the beast.

The monster's red eyes pierced Luigi's, and his roar sent a horrified and petrified Luigi to the pavement. As if the world didn't matter, and his target was gone, the monster sent a fireball directly at the felled plumber. Luigi, in a determined moment for him, swung the plate with a grunt, and watched in anticipation as the fireball sailed back towards its sender.

The plan worked. With a bang, the wood suddenly caught on fire, and began to burn. The beast fell to the ground, belly up, and it seemed as if the world shook by the falling of the monster. Luigi, putting his famous jumping-skills to work, stomped on the vulnerable, weak, wooden spots that weren't already burning.

"Take this!" Luigi taunted, feeling the wooden foundation break on the monster. The wooden behemoth, clearly broken, stood up, shaking the plumber off of him. Luigi's eyes turned once again to the cliff. He knew that the monster was broken, but not defeated, and would harm the town again. Luigi sprinted as fast as he could, heart pounding and all, towards the edge of the cliff.

"Mama mia!" Luigi cried, hoping the Bowser model would hear. "What an ugly monster! It was as weak as the real Bowser, too!" As if the beast deciphered the insult, it rushed with its hands stretched outwards, as if it wanted to strangle Luigi.

Luigi sidestepped at the right moment, and watched proudly as the evil monster tumbled down the jagged, rocky cliffside to its inevitable destruction. Luigi was quite shocked when he waited for a full twenty seconds, but didn't even hear a thud, for it was such a far way down.

Silence filled the streets once more as the threat had vanished. The surviving toads poked their oversized heads out of doors, windows, holes, pipes, and stopped as Luigi, sweating and having torn his clothes, trudged back to his house. Some smaller toad children hugged Luigi without a word, in eternal gratitude for saving them all. The older toads cheered for Luigi as a surprised Luigi blushed. Normally it was Mario who got all the attention, and normally, Luigi was too much of a gutless coward to save anybody. Alas, Luigi, on his own doorstep, realized that he had saved the city, if not the entire Mushroom kingdom.

"Bro..." Mario weakly muttered. "What is that sound? What was all that?" Luigi went silent, listening to the slight sound piercing the metal home of the plumbers. Luigi smiled at his elder sibling, his hero, the reason he mustered all that bravery, and probably the end of his life because of the broken plate.

"Oh...nothing. Go back to sleep...it's just toads cheering."


End file.
